From scorned satirist to a beloved icon

It all started with a slim novel, released in London in 1955, titled Son of a Smaller Hero. In it, 24-year-old Mordecai Richler made his first successful effort at mapping what he called the Jewish “ghetto of Montreal … streets named St Urbain, St Dominique, Rachel” and, of course, “St Lawrence Boulevard, or Main Street,” which was “a frenzy of poor Jews, who gather there to buy groceries, furniture, clothing, and meat.” Son of a Smaller Hero contained no shortage of familiar material for the home crowd to argue about: a pair of Old World grandfathers, one otherworldly and religious, the other a brute who oversees a scrapyard. The youthful narrator, called Noah Adler, has a lighthearted loser of a father and is a fitful student at “Wellington College,” Richler’s fictional stand-in for Sir George Williams, his own alma mater. The author’s mother, whose English name was Lily, is present in shadowy ways, too, through the narrator’s long-suffering mother Leah. How much more could the young man offer to signal to his hometown readers that his second novel combined dark nostalgia for childhood streets with a ripely satiric kiss-off?

The Author’s Note in Son of a Smaller Hero is so overwrought in its disavowal of the novel’s autobiographical content that one wonders how Richler’s publisher could have missed it as a red flag in need of toning down: “Although all the streets described in this book are real streets, and the seasons, tempers and moods are those of Montreal as I remember them, all the characters portrayed are works of the imagination and all the situations they find themselves in are fictional. Any reader approaching this book in a search for ‘real people’ is completely on the wrong track, and what’s more, has misunderstood my whole purpose. Son of a Smaller Hero is a novel, not an autobiography.”

In the mid-1950s there was not much in the way of homegrown Canadian fiction, never mind Jewish Canadian novels, and Son of a Smaller Hero attracted attention and readers. The response it received in certain Jewish circles was one of anger and embarrassment. The novel appeared just as big-city Canadian Jews were moving en masse from their immigrant neighbourhoods to the suburbs, so a portrait of the Jewish Main proved provocative and timely. Inadvertently, it offered an edgy, ethnographic and elegiac portrait of a dying neighbourhood.

In his Richler biography, Leaving St Urbain, Reinhold Kramer quotes a Richler uncle who recalls that “Montreal Jews recognized the people in the book … and the family hated Richler for that.” This manner of reading Richler’s fiction for its autobiographical underpinnings took on a certain momentum, and not just in Montreal. In faraway Vancouver, following a 1956 “Fighting Words” Program mounted by the Jewish Community Centre, the Jewish Western Bulletin reported that one attendee viewed Son of a Smaller Hero as “a personal affront.” It was “despicable” that a “Jewish author should incite anti-Semitism in this way.” For all the displeasure Richler caused, one fact was clear: his novel had entered public discussion in a way that most writers could only dream of.

The ’50s and ’60s were a period of great social possibility and economic prosperity for North American Jews, and some were not in the mood to have their progress archly satirized. Philip Roth took the brunt of such fury in the United States, and Leonard Cohen received his share of criticism in the early stages of his career. Richler’s reception, at least among Jews, became a love-hate affair, which, arguably, did his book sales and public profile no harm. Well into the 1970s, mainstream venues like the Montreal Gazette and Star ran feature articles addressing the author’s “lack of balance,” his penchant for sparing “nobody,” his willingness to sell his work, critical of Quebec anti-Semitism, to “blue-ribbon” U.S. magazines like the Atlantic Monthly. In letters to the editor, Richler’s readers pushed back, arguing that it was the reader’s responsibility to judge Richler’s “literary perspective with objectivity not supersensitive subjectivity.” But these disagreements kept the author and his work at the centre of Montreal Jewish life.

The Yiddish press had its own view of Richler’s oeuvre. A characteristic piece, published by a Toronto correspondent in the New York-based Morgen Freiheit, wondered how a writer who had been raised in a “Yiddisher” home and environment could offer, again and again, what the author deemed “darkly hurtful” portraits of Montreal Jews.

After his return from London in 1972, Richler was in demand for public events. In 1979, the Jewish Book Month Program, mounted by the Canadian Jewish Congress and Montreal’s Jewish Public Library, hoisted their own red flag, inviting Richler to address the topic “Writing About Jews.” The invitation might well have included the caveat that questions and fisticuffs could be expected after the main event.

Richler watchers noted a shift in the early and mid-1990s. A report in the Canadian Jewish News acknowledged that an older, mellower Richler was no longer a “Bad Boy,” but a “more benign creature, Grouchy Old Man.” He had become a “literary icon among his own people, maybe in part because” he was “taking on Quebec nationalists with the same withering style he used to reserve for his fellow Jews.”

In June of 1996, five years before his death, Richler spoke to a packed audience at the Shaar Hashomayim synagogue in Montreal, ostensibly on “The Literary Life,” a less provocative subject than that he’d addressed at the Jewish Public Library years before. It became clear once he started that his offerings would consist of a reading from his novel in progress (which appeared as Barney’s Version the following year). Once done, Richler sat down, and the advertised question period failed to materialize. The outcome, a reporter guessed, represented an impasse between a community and its best known creative figure. No one knew what to say. Barney’s Version went on to win the Giller Prize, which solidified the final stage of Richler’s transformation into a beloved icon, who was carefully followed and just a bit feared.

Norman Ravvin’s latest novel is The Joyful Child from Gaspereau Press. He is Chair of the Concordia Institute for Canadian Jewish Studies.

Comments

We encourage all readers to share their views on our articles and blog posts. We are committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion, so we ask you to avoid personal attacks, and please keep your comments relevant and respectful. If you encounter a comment that is abusive, click the "X" in the upper right corner of the comment box to report spam or abuse. We are using Facebook commenting. Visit our FAQ page for more information.

Almost Done!

Postmedia wants to improve your reading experience as well as share the best deals and promotions from our advertisers with you. The information below will be used to optimize the content and make ads across the network more relevant to you. You can always change the information you share with us by editing your profile.

By clicking "Create Account", I hearby grant permission to Postmedia to use my account information to create my account.

I also accept and agree to be bound by Postmedia's Terms and Conditions with respect to my use of the Site and I have read and understand Postmedia's Privacy Statement. I consent to the collection, use, maintenance, and disclosure of my information in accordance with the Postmedia's Privacy Policy.

Postmedia wants to improve your reading experience as well as share the best deals and promotions from our advertisers with you. The information below will be used to optimize the content and make ads across the network more relevant to you. You can always change the information you share with us by editing your profile.

By clicking "Create Account", I hearby grant permission to Postmedia to use my account information to create my account.

I also accept and agree to be bound by Postmedia's Terms and Conditions with respect to my use of the Site and I have read and understand Postmedia's Privacy Statement. I consent to the collection, use, maintenance, and disclosure of my information in accordance with the Postmedia's Privacy Policy.